Abandon every hope, ye who enter

Because I am entirely too excited about my new painting obsession

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:43:47 GMT

Some painted Necrons, from Tomb World Hephaestus, for people who might be looking here but haven't seen them on facebook... perhaps obviously, the cut is picture heavy.

My first warrior

A base of scarabs, top down

Lord with destroyer body

Heavy destroyer

Lava base

Lava base with flash

Failure is ok if it's unexpected by those who matter, right?

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:52:13 GMT

Bad news - I did so incredibly poorly on the comps that normally they'd recommend I drop to a Master's right off.

Good news - I was such a good student that they are instead just flabbergasted at my failure and recommend I try again after figuring out what went wrong.

Apparently, torrenting is a very masculine thing to do

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:33:16 GMT

Likelihood of you being FEMALE is 15%
Likelihood of you being MALE is 85%

http://www.mikeonads.com/2008/07/13/using-your-browser-url-history-estimate-gender/

Why must the world suck so very much?

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:29:26 GMT

I'm gonna guess that many people will have heard of Eve Carson's death. Very tragic - senior, student body president, well-liked by all, killed in what seems to be a random act of senseless violence, possibly just a plain old mugging in a place everyone felt themselves safe. I didn't know her, but all reports have her as kind, charismatic, passionate, and going places.

Another college student died recently, Lauren Burk from Auburn University. The cases are often put together as they both come from Georgia, and there was some suspicion of a tie that doesn't seem to have played out.

On the whole, a rather shocking and tragic week in college student news... but not to Fred fucking Phelps and his goddamn hate church, Westboro Baptist Church. They have protested both memorial services at the girls' homes, and that I know of, plan to protest the memorial service here in Chapel Hill (I don't know their plans for any similar thing happening at Auburn). Why?

"God Hates American Colleges. They are filthy, anti-God, arrogant, debauched, decadent & depraved. This victim was student body pres."

"God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers. Ergo, God hates N. Carolina Univ. It is a cesspool of iniquity - throughout: top to bottom - staff, administration, faculty, alumni, student body."

American Universities are "God-defying, Satanic, and vile."

All quotes from their lovely site godhatesfags.com (I found them here , a nice writeup in itself)

There's a silent protest of the protest being planned, trying to block off the jackasses from the service, from the mourners (in the same vein as the Patriot Guard Riders here. Signs there: “God is Your Enemy,” “God Sent the Killer” and “You Eat Your Kids.”) As Sylvia mentioned, not quite as good as blocking them off with nunchucks, but strong in its way. I probably won't be going, as I don't trust myself to not haul off and attack the entire crowd of ignorant, worthless, craven, idiotic whores-get.

Why the hell not?

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:25:05 GMT

That 36 question survey meme - you're supposed to fill it out and leave it in the comments, then repost the blank one in your lj, yadda yadda

1) Are you currently in a serious relationship?
A.

2) What was your dream growing up?
A.

3) What talent do you wish you had?
A.

4) If I bought you a drink what would it be?
A.

5) Favorite vegetable?
A.

6) What was the last book you read?
A.

7) What zodiac sign are you?
A.

8) Any Tattoos and/or Piercings? Explain where.
A.

9) Worst Habit?
A.

10) If you saw me walking down the street would you offer me a ride?
A.

11) What is your favorite sport?
A.

12) Do you have a Negative or Optimistic attitude?
A.

13) What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator with me?
A.

14) Worst thing to ever happen to you?
A.

15) Tell me one weird fact about you.
A.

16) Do you have any pets?
A.

17) What if i showed up at your house unexpectedly?
A.

18) What was your first impression of me? (hmmm...careful!)
A.

19) Do you think clowns are cute or scary?
A.

20) If you could change one thing about how you look, what would it be?
A.

21) Would you be my crime partner or my conscience?
A.

22) What color eyes do you have?
A.

23) Ever been arrested?
A.

24) Bottle or can soda?
A.

25) If you won $10,000 today, what would you do with it?
A.

27) What's your favorite place to hang at?
A.

28) Do you believe in ghosts?
A.

29) Favorite thing to do in your spare time?
A.

30) Do you swear a lot?
A.

31) Biggest pet peeve?
A.

32) In one word, how would you describe yourself?
A.

33) Do you believe/appreciate romance?
A.

35) Do you believe in God?
A.

36) Will you repost this so I can fill it out and do the same for you?
A.

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:21:30 GMT

Possible reworking of the Sacred series - it fits, but just barely, by dint of the fact that Deb's a big fat liar and the varying viewpoints means no two stories are gonna say the same thing. Continuing in this vein might actually give me a plot hook to tie thing together and have an actual story rather than scattered vignettes...

Links to other bits (in semi-chronological order by event, not by writing):
Sacred
Angels
Watching

        I looked up after I made the cut on my left wrist, making sure to open as much of the vein as I could. He was standing there, looking at me sadly, hands in his pocket. “I can't.”
        What? I blinked up at him, confused a bit in my blood loss. “You promised. Eight years. I'm 21 now. I'm so tired...”
        He crouched down next to me, not even looking in to my eyes anymore. “I can't. You belong to her. I can't take you.”
        That made even less sense. “What? You said she wasn't the one. You said that the distance...”
        He nodded. “Not that one. What I said then was true. But there's another now.”
        I started to protest but then an image of Cassandra came to my mind. “But... she doesn't even want me. She doesn't... she... You promised!”
        “There are rules. That I must follow.” He sighed. “That you must follow. You belong to her and I can't take you.”
        I slammed my fist on the ground ineffectually. “Do you not understand how outdated and useless our rules are? Here in the modern world people live to be 80, 90 all on their own, without any silly Champions. I have no purpose, no meaning, no usefulness. This whole thing is just... dumb!”
        He looked back up at me, all solemn. “It is tradition, and your blood runs true. You would die for her, wouldn't you?”
        This time I looked away. “That's not the point! She doesn't need me to.” I looked back down at my wrists, watching the blood roll off. “There are no battles for me to fight, no country or beliefs or dynasties to defend. The world has changed and has no room...”
        He interrupted me. “You would die for her, wouldn't you?”
        “...Yes.”
        “You are hers. I can not take you.” With that he stood up and my wrists stopped bleeding.
        “Fuck you.” I sat back against the tree, willing the boy in his too-tight black jeans to go back to wherever he existed, when he wasn't making my family's life a living hell.

Deprtmental Xmas partuy (leaving tyhe typoes here siolely to show people how serioudsly badly I typ

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 08:20:42 GMT

e when drunk if I didn't go back and edit meticulously. (continuance of title)

So, for those who didn't know, tonight was the departmental Christmas party, with the entertainment of the night being a primary part of the first years hazing, where we had to perform a skit. That went well. A professor's wife told me I sounded just like Varchenko ( yes this was my actual role, he's a semi-crazy Russian professor) and in general we got a lot of compliments.

My two flasks ran out just after the game of Flip Cup in which the first year team trounced the non-first year team, which was good, cause then I might have been forced to drink shots of beer. I did have my first keg-stand ever, admittedly only staying up for a count of 5, but that was okay cause my only goal was to provide fodder for the peer pressuring of another of my fellow-classmates, who refused to go if she was gonna be the first girl-grad student ever to do a keg-stand at the Chirstmas party.

I also managed to impress a few of the older grad students during the after party, by chugging an entire Jack Daniels bitch beer type beverage (unfortunately half the 6-pack was a crappy cola flavor, so I have no more yummy berry JD stuffs, and don't remember the funny thing that was written on the label (I remembered the funny thing on the label! It had "certified colors"!)). This was, of course, during a drinking game called Kings, where the person to my right had to keep drinking as long as I did. She wasn't very happy with me.

Quarters is also a fun (drinking) game, though I think it'd be fun even without the drinking (though I apparently have an odd idea of fun. The only other thing worth noting were the cops blocking off the entrance to my complex which had me scrambling for a seat belt and to hide my remaining JDs, but after a detour to drop off the rest of the car, they had moved away from the entrance and all was good.

So, all in all, it was a pretty good night. :-)

It's been awhile...

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 06:54:29 GMT

So I thought I'd ramble a bit...

First off, I'm going to Chapel Hill, having been rejected by Toronto, as most decisions had already been made, and my showing wasn't good enough to knock people off that list. Damn postal service.

That said, it's been nice getting to pre-build a social network in the new place. It looks to be shaping up nicely, with a good balance and good people.

Other than shuffling between Chapel Hill (where Sylvia and I already have an apartment) and Greensboro, I've been working (spending my last summer boring myself senseless at IT&S), not playing WoW much and getting re-crazied about the SCA. Current plan involves authorizing before Pennsic, so that I can fight in the war. It's very possible, and perhaps even hopeful.

All-in-all, it's been a rather uneventful summer, up until yesterday when my car broke down while I was driving down the highway in between CH and G'boro and I got a ride with the nice tow truck guy (who clued me in to an apparently awesome 24 hour diner in CH) back to G'boro with my car, which now awaits only devoiding of stuff before being consigned to the junkyard. This saddens me, as I liked my car, and in general prefer it to my new ride, which is my grandparents' old car. Doesn't help that it's pretty much my own damn fault (though I still like claiming that it's Matt's unshakable faith in the crappiness of my car that caused that bit of the engine to fall off) However, at least I have a car...

Up in the future are the odd SCA event, my 21st birthday, Pennsic, moving, then orientation. Whee fun, and all that stuff...

Good news/annoying news

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:37:23 GMT

Good news: I got an acceptance email from Chapel Hill today
Annoying news: They want an answer by April 15th (gonna see about an extension, given the date I got this)
Good news: I finally called up Toronto
Annoying news: The status "Decision Made" was false.
Good news: A decision will be made by the end of the week, and it will be emailed.

Bad news: I have no idea where I want to go.

Currently, it's come down to stability, nearby friends and more comfort vs new things, AEMMA and possible growth and such. Chapel Hill is secure and fairly steady; Toronto has big risks and big possible gains.

What if I will always regret not going? What if it turns out I just can't do it once I get there? What if...

I hate decisions.

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:17:56 GMT

Oh, and I second Alison's support.

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:43:08 GMT

Anyone involved in the situation has heard me complain about the illogicity of all sides in this damned conflict. If you haven't, ask me about it. Ranting is stress-relief. I'm not gonna get into that here though. Blog posts are not the platform I would choose for debate. The lag time creates issues I don't like. So, I'm gonna use the blog as it usually is, as a whining pessimistic fit.

The problem here is not that Guilford doesn't teach its core values. It's not that someone was negligient in these areas. It is that people suck. One of the Quaker values I occassionally like to adopt is that there is that of "god" in everyone. Now, I interpret that liberally (in the non-political use of the term), as I don't believe in a god, but rather think of it as the potential for good in folks. However, in equal and sometimes greater proportion to that potential is the ability to just be plain fucking dumb. To tangent off into nerdiness, there is a fixed point in the equation of human life, and it's the point of being incredibly stupid. And it's a attractor fixed point. People tend to it. The more people you have, the more you iterate the function, the more fucking inevitable. It's not the goddamn responsibility of the administration to force their morality on us. That's why I chose to come here, even though it's a nominally religious institution, because you are not demanded to be religious or even of the same religion. Being a Quaker college means that the administration is to hold themselves to Quaker values, and promote them, not shove them down our throat. The inability of a few folks to follow said values reflects in no way on the Quaker-ness or not or the college. There are some things the administration could do better in regards to diffusing some of the issues that come up over this, such as looking over admissions policies for athletes/non-athletes (currently, athletes are given different tours, some information about the college is left out of registration packets and they have a completely different Chaos experience). But classes on what the Guilford/Quaker core values are fucking pointless in terms of fixing anything about what happened.

The main thing that is tearing me apart emotionally is not the anger (there is plenty of that) but the hopelessness. This is what people are. It's what humanity is. Even if we work together, change things, create a safer space, forge a true community, within 4-5 years it'll be gone and no one will even remember. One of the folks at the forum brought up something that happened 5 years ago - a series or rapes and assaults that happened on campus. After it, folks worked together to make things safer. And no recent entry knows anything about it. No matter how hard we work, it all goes away, more ephemeral than we are ourselves. There is, and can be, no long term hope. People fail and always will.

I hate people.

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 05:01:15 GMT

It's time for the next PSA brought to us by the fun land of HelpDesk...

Lack of intelligence on your part is not an emergency in mine – nor is it my fault.

Point 1) No Ma'am, we do not have magic special technology of the future that insures that computers will never break. Typing for 4+ hours and *never saving once* is folly on an extreme level. I'm so very sorry that we didn't take pains to inform you personally that computers (especially their network connections) are not infallible and will, in fact, sometimes shut down, or lose connection. Don't blame me personally for the fact that through your stupidity, your already late paper is gonna be later. I just don't give a shit.

Point 2) Frankly, sir, your story-telling skills leave something to be desired. “All that shit” is not, contrary to your apparent opinion, an informative statement. I am the night shift. I've been working for multiple hours on little sleep at this point and it's 10 minutes before we close, making it 10:20pm. I had nothing to do with anything that happened to you earlier. If you didn't have the balls to come ask for help the first day you had problems, it's none of our faults that it didn't get fixed that day. Neither is it the HelpDesks' fault if there was a network setting messed up. In case you couldn't tell, we're not the ones getting paid by salary and given a comfy office. Furthermore, talking over me about how you're tired of all this shit, about how you work 60 hours a week and go to school fulltime (making sure to let me know that you're not some college student getting drunk all the time and goofing off) , about how my incompetence is just the last straw, how you wanna talk to a damned supervisor (guess who that is!) when I hadn't even begun the other options – lame. Just lame. The kicker to the whole damn story? Remember how you were so pissed that I said that your *Lotus* password had to be reset on campus? How I specifically focused on *Lotus*, as if it were, perhaps, special? Nice of to slip in that you see all your emails, but were “tired of all this shit” (if only I had a nickel for every use of that phrase) with your Lotus and class shit? Perhaps the multiple instance of “Lotus” in your email window, client, path to the web page didn't happen to tip you off that LOTUS IS YOUR GODDAMNED EMAIL! No sir, Lotus is not the same thing as Moodle,a nd the two words cannot be used interchangably. They are, in fact, very different, and conveniently enough for you, Moodle can be fixed over the phone. Now, doesn't that sound nice? Now shut up and get off my goddamned phone, you arrogant asshole.

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 22:32:34 GMT

I have arrived safe and sound from the Frozen North! While I regret missing Brock's birthday thing, I had a pretty awesome time. And now, for an lj-cut of doom wherein I expound upon my adventures...

Well, slap me silly and call me Noah...

‘cause wherever I go, there go the floods. Driving up to Virginia was an usual 5 hour drive, marked only by two short spurts right before and right around Richmond. In both cases, visibility was down to just a few feet past my front bumper, due to rain. In the second spurt, there were puddles of standing water reaching to the undercarriage of the car in front of me. In the meantime, there were Crazy McSpeedyPantses passing me despite the fact that I was maintaining the speed limit.

You’ve been doing what with the who now?

I arrive at Matt’s to find him... (wait for it, it’s a shocker) completely unprepared. Taken a back by the fact I expect him up and ready to go by 9 the following morning, he spent much of his evening playing Kingdom of Loathing. I managed to kick him around enough that we left by 11. Go us. It only took us about 10 hours to get to Toronto, after zipping through Customs with a minimum of fuss. However, once at Toronto, it took us an hour to find where we were staying, after having confused our directions. We stopped at one point to buy a map, and found we were now, of course, just a few blocks from our destination. We finally got there, I crashed, Matt pestered until we bought food, and there was evening, and morning, and it was the third day.

And on the seventh day... oh wait.

Sunday was, ironically enough, a day of rest. It began as a comedy of errors, as we ended up leaving a bit late regardless of the rest, we forgot the money for AEMMA stuff, and most importantly, hadn’t been given the key to the house, a fact that didn’t occur to us until we had shut the doors. We decided to explore a bit anyway, and at least plot out the territory, see where stuff was. Downtown driving was even more fun than usual, as setting up was taking place for the gigantic Pride Parade and Dyke March that was happening later in the day, as we had managed to come up at the tail end of Toronto-wide Pride Week. After driving around, scouting out AEMMA’s salle and parking adjacent, and the math department building, and parking adjacent, we headed back home, and decided to give up on the day. I actually quite welcomed this, as the day before, with its length, novelty and stressful were making me rather desirous of some cooldown time. Which was accomplished in front of the Canadian cable TV.

I could watch thing in Chinese, French, or Chinese with French subtitles...

Seriously, I could! Canadian cable TV had multiple French channels, at least 2 Chinese channels, an Italian channel, plus quite a few of the home town favorites. Cartoon Network became TeleToon (with also included a bit of Nickelodeon) with Adult Swim becoming something like “The Detour” Matt wouldn’t ever let me keep it on the French channels when he was in the room, but I stopped there for a little bit when I could. Most of our time at the guesthouse (which was pretty much a house, with the rooms rented out. There was a sign in the kitchen with the names of folks staying – we had a fellow named Brock, from Australia across the hall from us, and there were folks from England and Pakistan, I believe, as well as another couple of Americans.

So, the head of the American Mathematical Society works in Canada, does he?

After our day of lounging, we had a day of city-ness. We left to get to the University before lunch times, and made it. I was amused by the fact that the parking meters, despite the fact that the highest you could pay for parking was $3, had card swipey things for credit cards. Slowly, cash really is becoming completely obsolete. We managed to find our way into the Building with the math department, and made our way up to the sixth floor, passing, on our way to the admission area, an entire library just for math books. It looked incredibly fun. I talked to the lady at admission for a bit, became under the impression that my grades would probably be passable, got a whole passel of information about the department, its classes and admission process. I forgot to ask about the GREs but absolutely nothing was mentioned about them in my talk (and she went over pretty well in detail all the other requirements) or in the packet of information, so I’ll be emailing that question soon. After talking to folks there, we headed over to the International Students Centre, which was rather pointless as apparently, no information would be given out until I was accepted, and then I’d get a whole stack of paperwork to fill out.

In Soviet Canada, coffee drinks you!

With these errands done, we still had time left on the meter, so we walked around for a bit. One sign that caused us a great deal of pleasure – the sign for $some_russian_last_name’s Cafe, which had on it a picture of and axe crossed behind a coffee cafe. We wandered around campus, Matt noticing how big it was, and myself enjoying the awesome Gothic structures, and otherwise pretty buildings. ‘Tis a very pretty place, the campus and the downtown in general. We stopped off into a Tim Horton’s, to satisfy my curiousity as to what manner of beast it was, actually (turns out to be a coffee shop/deli type place). We ended up having lunch at Harvey’s, since Matt did not believe deli sandwiches and soups to be real food. Harvey’s is like a Subway for burgers – you order your burger, hamburger, cheeseburger, etc, and then it goes down the line and is topped to order. It was kinda fun. After eating, not wanting to hang around town for multiple hours, we headed back to the house.

Wherein marching training fouls up my footwork...

Evening time of that same day was AEMMA time. There was some random new construction stuff going on next to the building that hadn’t been there Sunday, and despite this new obstacle, I managed to adequately parallel park, with Matt’s help, for the first time ever. We found our way up past the mechanics into the salle, and were very much welcomed by the folks there. We missed henchminion, I believe, which was a shame, but tons of fun was had. It felt precisely the it should, with the technique-ness and detailedness of fencing, the solidness of SCA and the realism of having a actual sword, albeit blunted sword, to fight with. I’ve come back with footwork drills, positions and 2 cuts to practice on my own, to prepare for the eventuality of my return.

Rednecks = Republicans, eh?

After practice, we grabbed more food and headed off to meet some family friend of Matt’s. They were rather awesome, and we had some fun conversations, including one where over the course of the time it became obvious that in her usage, redneck did in fact signify Republican. It’s one way to translate the whole red state/blue state bit. The visit made me wish even more that we could have found a way to contact her a little bit prior to the trip, as she mentioned she would have been willing to host us in her house, and that her daughter (who we did not get to meet) goes to U of T and could have given us a tour.

If getting there is half the fun, the journey back is most of the suck.

As we left Toronto Tuesday morning, it was drizzling kinda, and kept up with some little bit of rain for a good ways through Canada. Getting back through the border was not quite as easy as crossing it in the first place. For one thing, we noted while we were in line that Matt’s license has expired, so we performed a seat switch so that i would be in the driver’s seat when we handed the nice folks our photo ID. When we finally got up there, I got chewed out by the officer for having an expired license tag on the front of the car. I hadn’t realized that this was wrong, considering my grandpa has had his expired Texas plate on the front of that car ever since he’d had it, and my family had had the extra license plate deal for a while. However, NY state law at the least says it’s illegal, and I got the lovely threat of “If it wasn’t so busy, I’d pull you aside and call the state police on you.”

Skunks in the rain? Mothafuckin’ skunks in the mothafuckin’ rain?!?

Matt drove most of the way to his house, which was fine until he let me know that he had been lightheaded and woozy for the last hour he was driving. It was raining for a bit as we left Canada, then it cleared, only to have the rain find us again at Pittsburg and continue, rather heavily, until we got to Matt’s house. We got back in the dark, and I read for a bit and then fell asleep, knowing I needed to wake up fairly early to get back in time for work. I woke up, showered, and Matt’s mom made me breakfast, and then I drove home, with everything bright and sunny, and no complications.

So there we have, my crazy wacky fun trip to Canada. I just wish I hadn't had to immediately go to work... ;-)

Reason #1 to never get ridiculously shit-faced

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 06:09:23 GMT

You scare the bejeebus out of 12-year-old boy who is sneaking out of the house to go hang out with a couple of girls *and* you delay an UBRS run by moaning and screaming loud enough to be heard two blocks away, thus requiring the only armed member of the household to go out and check to make sure you aren't being attacked. Also, you piss off your friend when random folk come up and ask if they can do anything and remind them that you're being god-awful loud...

OK, maybe those were reasons 1,2 and 3. It still makes for a good story.

Spaulders...

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 06:07:34 GMT

UBRS is a mighty fine dungeon... lotsa nifty plate drops, two pieces of Valor, Draconian Deflector, it's a pretty place. Until the pally raid leader, who "doesn't like master looter, so were[sic] doing group loot" (actually, there were probably a hell of a lot more typos) rolls need on the Spaulders of Valor. And beats me. A rogue rolled to, which might have annoyed me even more, but he didn't win. Mister Pally McBadGrammarPants did. After beating my poor desk for a hit or two, I calmed down and shrugged off his "omg"s, "i suck"s, and his "im totlly not a ninja, i promis", - it was an upgrade from his other thing (not by a whole hell of a lot, and not as much of an upgrade as it would have been for me but, meh...)- he paid me a bit of gold to ease his guilty heart, and we're off again.

Until we down the Beast. And Lightforge Spaulders drop. His first two tells? "omg" "i suck" Mine? "Heh" "That's almost funny"

After all that funness, we didn't even drop the General. Two tries we had, and no dead General. And that to the fact it appeared that at least three of the members didn't speak English as a first language, and were giving conflicting orders, and I just had another super-fun-happy PUG. Whee fun! ;-)

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:50:44 GMT

I recently had a friend ask me what I planned to do with my life. We had been joking aorund a bit before that, so I laughingly said "If I was insane, or if I was being rational?" He answered, "Both." So I told him about my plans to go through the steps of getting a PhD and being a professor. When I stopped there, he prompted me with "And if you were insane?" I said I'd find a western swords-master, become their student and eventually become a swords-master of my own right.

Well, I found one. And we all know how incredibly sane I am, right?

Academy of European Medieval Martial Arts (by the way, the unsafe links were restricted to that one entry, not any and all links I may ever give). It's in Toronto. I want to go. Initial analysis proclaims its possibility. Toronto does in fact contain a Graduate School of Mathematics (though only one that I could find), part of the University of Toronto. So I could even continue with that not-quite insane path.

The thing is, this whole professor thing came about after I jokingly responded to the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" with "A student." I would be the stereotypic professional student. I wouldn't make a stellar teacher... passable, for college level stuff, but not excellent. And while I have a great respect for teachers, it's never been anything like a passion of mine. I could handle being a professor, and it would mean getting to play with math and computers forever. With a job. A career. A means to support myself. Those rational, reasonable requirements of life nowadays.

Swords-master, on the other hand, has been a passion of mine since always. Except for one problem. It's been a passion because what I really want, what I have really wanted since I could first read, and read my first King Arthur, or Robin Hood story... I want to be a knight. A knight errant, roaming about the countryside, defeating monsters, fulfilling quests, rescuing damsels, finding my true love, courting and wooing her, then performing these great deeds for both her honor and mine. Being someone who upholds all those crazily idealized thoughts of chivalry, gaining respect and honor and giving safety and justice in return. But that can't fucking happen. It can't. There is absolutely no place in the world for someone to uphold ideals at the point of a sword, for someone to make a career, a living protecting the weak with their strong arm and stout heart. There are no superheroes. Battles take place elsewhere, in places where I'm everything but completely ineffectual, not on a field of battle, or court of chivalry. There are no people to honor me, no Lady who would love me, no king to serve and no country to defend. Those things are gone and dead or never existed.

However, the romantic in me refuses to give up. It whispers seductively, "But wouldn't it be nice to know you could? To know that, if evil showed up in the form of the Black Knight, you could strike it down? Or that if a challenge came up in the form of that Green Knight, that you could take the blow? Or that if love came around in the form of the Maid Marion, that you could protect her?" And it's winning.

I *can* do this. It's possible. Might be tough. Screw that. It's going to be hard as all hell... I'll have to leave here, support myself, live on my own, juggle working, school and training, pay for all that stuff. But I think it's possible. And I think I want to do it. We'll see if I can manage it...

Ah, somniloquy

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 19:05:02 GMT

"I'm supposed to be a gumball..."

"What?!"

"I'm supposed to be a gumball."

"Are you asleep?"

"...maybe."

Whatcha wanna do? Wanna be hackers? Code crackers? Slackers?

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 15:55:54 GMT

Th "Hacking" competition went great. It was, of course, more of a defense competition, 'cause hacking is bad, right?, but it was a blast. 18 hours of through the night, non-stop network defense. We came in third... out of four, still better than last. We confused the hell out of the hacking team though. By the time the 18 hours were up, we had all learned a hell of a lot, gloated over some of our victories and were ready for bed, having been up for 27 hours at this point. We did our best to stay up until the usual bed time, to keep a proper sleep schedule. I failed for a few hours right before dinner, but then we ended up staying awake fairly late, so sleep schedule ended up just fine.

The irony and great amusement of the weekend happened the next day. Sunday we slept late, hung around the hot tub, basically did nothing. That evening, one of the team by the name of Colin, checked up on the game server he runs at his house. It was being hacked. Incredibly well, too. This hacker was smart and the battle was made even tougher by the fact that Colin didn't have physical access to his boxes, and had to depend on appartently not very computer savvy family members to do any physical things. It ended up getting turned off accidently, not before it managed to infect the rest of his family's computers. They got turned off on purpose, and dealt with later.

**ATTENTION: do NOT go to any URLs I may provide. Don't do it. Please. **

At this point, Colin had managed to grab a bit of information, such as a URL (linux.nl) from a apt-get script. We pull out the laptops, which by our powers combined made four, and go to work figuring out who this bastard is. We begin work with the school's laptop by going to that URL. It's a Dutch Linux "security" team, but there doesn't seem to be a link for packages, as Colin expected. He tries adding a few random folder names to the end of the URL, which, interestingly enough, takes him to the custom 404 page of a different site entirely (widexs.nl). Poking around a bit later, we notice an added button on the bookmarks toolbar folder for widexs. Note: this is Firefox. Yes, Firefox got owned. At this point, checking msconfig and the Task Manager, we realize, the box just got screwed. We reset msconfig to its usual state, and restart while Gene goes for his Thumb Drive o'Tools. Colin migrates to the Mac and quickly learns that it has been infected, in that short period of time, by the school laptop. Yes folks, the same script gets Windows, Mac and Linux machines. This is a damn good hacker (or, as we found out later, a damn good team).

On restart, the school's laptop had to be passed to me, as I was the only one who knows the admin password. We decide this is inefficient, therefore, the most apt admin name/password combo for a Windows XP box ever was created - username: "DamnButWeAre" password: "pwnedguys". I've discovered an inate talent in myself for coming up with username/password combos... it's rather fun. Things progress with our information gathering - first things first, we put up ZoneAlarm (a mighty nice little product) and played around with HijackThis. Past that, we decide that, since the box is compromised already, let's poke around at those dirty sites, read us some source code, figure out how the hell they managed this. Source code pointed us to some very nice little JavaScipt and VBScript, I believe, packages that we promptly used wget to grab whole for their site. We learned that it was a hacking *team* by the interesting comments they left to each other in the html. We also learned they were demopartiers, associated with raw.scene.org

At this point, most of us headed to bed, as it was getting close to 1, and we had to be up early-ish for plane-catching. (grrr... plane catching. Another story entirely.) Colin, on the other hand, got no sleep that night. He stayed up analysing the boxes and the scripts and figured out what the hell these folks did. He didn't tell us everything about what he found, jsut the basics. They infected no .exes, just .sys files. They did process injection after a legit process had started. They liked changing time stamps on files, but if that was part of some over-arching plan, it escapes me. It's actually how Colin noticed where the infection was occuring the most, in addition to the fact that AIM suddenly took up +50% of system resources...

So we got a second test right after our first, with a slight difference... this time, we're allowed to fight back. I wouldn't be surprised if Colin already had. Damn, but we were pwned, guys. It was an awesome, awesome weekend.

Sacred

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 06:41:10 GMT

It's been awhile since I've been hit with the bug to write and an idea to write about at the same time. This is a prequel to this one that I don't believe I ever posted here. Still not sure if I'm happy with their connection though... ah well. Also tenously tied to this one.

When I walked in that morning, she was packing. Intensively. She had almost everything packed away. I stopped in the doorway, leaned against it, cocking my head to the side.

“What are you doing?”

She glanced up, then back down and went back to packing. “I'm leaving.”

“Why? For how long?”

“Forever. I don't belong here anymore.”

I laughed. “Of course you do, silly. You belong with me.” I walked over to put my hand on her shoulder.

“Not anymore.”

I glance down at wrists. She has on new bandages, with small stains just beginning to seep through. “Deb...”

She interrupts me quickly. “Not my name.”

“But...” I move away, backs towards the door.

She interrupts me again. “I'm leaving.”

I shook my head “But I need you.”

A small smile flits across her face. “Not me. You don't need me. You don't even know me. I'm new, completely this time. This place is not a part of my life. Nothing that was before is. That person is dead and now I have to leave.”

I sat down on the chair next to the door. “Where will you go?”

“Somewhere else. Somewhere that fits me. Until I change again.” She shrugs, picking up a pile of things in the corner and heading out the door.

“Take me with you,” I say as I reach a hand across the doorway blocking her path.

She raises an eyebrow and just stares until I drop my arm. “That defeats the purpose. It's better this way. Your sort of life is different than mine.”

“Please...”

“Stop that,” she says not looking at me again as she tosses the pile into a large trash can. “It's not in you to beg. You'll live. Now let me.”

******

“Hey love...”

I blinked once as I realised the sun was now in my eyes. “Don't call me that.”

“What, love?” Alex stretched a bit as she sat up and came over the sit behind me.

“Don't call me that.”

“Fine then. I won't. What's wrong with you anyway?” She places a hand on my neck, but I shrug it off to glance obviously over at the calendar.

“Right. Of course.” She shifts to sit cross-legged next to me. “You know, it's been years.”

It had been years. Didn't make it hurt less. I jerk away as she reaches out to touch me on the shoulder again. “Don't...”

“Dammit, Cass. You can't blame me for not being her.”

******

The first time she let me watch, I cried. I tried not to, but to watch the blood mingling into the dirt and water, her blood, I couldn't help but cry.

“Why?” I whispered after, holding her wrists in my hands, careful to be gentle with the bandages.

“You can't blame me for not being me, love. Think about it. Who would want to? This way... it's so much better, easier. I just let everything slip away. Some things don't mean as much as they did before. And some things mean more. And always for the better.” She extracted one hand to touch my face and make me look at hers.

“What sort of better though?”

She smiled mischeviously. “Better enough to get you.”

I smile back. “You could have had me before.”

“Oh really?” To hear her laugh after what I had just seen was beauty in itself. “You hardly noticed me. And I never would have asked.”

I looked away as she turned to gather her supplies and whispered where she might be able to hear. “I noticed you...”

******

I sigh. “I'm not blaming you for anything...”

“Yes, you are. You're blaming me for her leaving... you've been blaming everyone since then. Until they left too.”

There was no answer to that. So, everyone had been leaving. It's apparently what people do when they graduate.

“I got a job offer.” She said, finally looking away.

“Good for you.”

“In Philly.”

Apparently, it's what people do.

“C'mon, Cass. You could... come with me. It'd be nice to have a familiar face.”

I shook my head. “No. No, I can't.”

“Why not?” she said, annoyed.

“I can't. I'm staying here.” I stand up and go over to my desk.

“You could get a job up there easy. You're brilliant. Anyone you applied to would jump on the chance if they had half a brain. A job with advancement potential, somewhere to go...”

I interrupted her. “I make enough to live here. I don't need any big-time job. I don't need to advance. I'm not leaving.”

“What are you waiting for, Cassandra?” she yelled. “There's nothing for you here. You have no friends, a dead-end, drudgery job, and a dingy apartment. You go to work, go to clubs, get drunk and come home. What is keeping you here?”

There. I found what I was looking for. “She might come back.” I twist off the cap of the bottle of rum.

“She's not coming back. She left you, she left all of us. We did care about her too, you know.”

I look at the level of the liquid in the bottle, then drink the rest of it down.

“Cass, listen to me. She left you here, kicked you out of her life. I know you'd follow her to the ends of the earth, but you can't follow her out of your own life. She's gone, and she's not coming back. Cass...”

I throw the bottle away. “She might come back.”

******

“I always come back.” Deborah took a sip from her flask, the alcoholic one.

I sigh. “Yeah, but... what if one time you go to far? What if the precautions you take aren't enough?”

“They will be. I know my limits.” She hands it to me as I lean against the wall while she searchs her pockets for the key.

“There are always mistakes.”

She turns to me and gives me a serious look. “Not with this. This is sacred. There are no mistakes in the sacred.”

******

Another sip of whiskey. A sound behind me makes me turn around, but it's just the girl lying in my bed. Not even Alex. She was in Philly. Just some girl. How many mistakes have I made, staying here?

“There are no mistakes in the sacred.”

I smile as the cool night breeze flowing in from the window sounds like her voice, and crawl back under the covers with the girl whose name I didn't know.

Feverish != a good thing when you have a hard enough time distinguishing between reality and not

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 03:14:53 GMT

If there is any evidence that a god exists at all, it is the fact that around the time I begin to be more vocal about the fact that I don't really believe in one, I get hit, in rather quick succession, with mono, recurrence of a problem requiring surgery, months of recovery from that, a badly twisted ankle and then, when all that is done with, the nasty flu bug that apparently has been going around, which is leaving me feverish, nauseated, shaky and with a sore throat and a headache. Previous to this year, I very, very rarely got sick - I think at one point I had gone ~5-6 years without needing to see a doctor. Which is good, considering how much I dislike them. Bah!

Stupid, stupid sicknesses, stupid year, sad Dani.

EDIT: Sigh. My baby cousin who was here last weekend apparently had strep in the form of a diaper rash, and I helped change his diaper once. Going for a strep test tomorrow-ish. Blargh.

So, my cousins offers a one-shot if I come to Dallas sometime...

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 02:42:28 GMT

And thus begins planning for the summer road trip. It's do-able. Totally do-able. Dallas to Wisconsin to Greensboro, all in a couple of weeks (so long as Rachel can come too) Heh. Craziness.

And oh the crazy quotes of the innocents... how badly they amuse me...

Damn Small Linux

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 23:51:21 GMT

I have nothing to say except for this...

I have managed to make my USB pen drive bootable, into Linux, Damn Small Linux in fact, and am now poking around on a command-line type AIM client.

I feel vindicated as a computer geek.

Now more people need to get online that would understand me as I brag.

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 13:34:27 GMT

Bad thing of yesterday: Doctor says ankle is sprained. If I don't want to be limping for a month, I have to use crutches. Crutches are fun when you're 10 and playing around, not when you actually have to put all your weight on your shoulders and other foot.

Good thing of yesterday: It always nice to have a friend who asks what he can do and offers to be your bodyguard since you're "obviously trying to kill yourself" and that would be bad because you're "one of the coolest people I know". While he's obviously crazy to say such things, it's still kinda nice.

Bad thing of today: Damn my underarms are sore. That's all.

Good thing of today: Con reports are starting! Gravyboy (http://gravyboy.com/) has put up a gallery of pictures and video, and Devil's Panties (http://devilspanties.keenspot.com/) has a WtHCon comic today. Woo!

EDIT: And there's http://ubersoft.net/ too. Silly me for not putting that up there before.

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 03:56:50 GMT

'k, this has gone past amusing. I thought I was finished. I was a good girl, and weaned myself off the pain medicine as soon as possible, even though there was still some level of pain associated with changing of dressing. However, with my new contraption, the pain is nigh unbearable, to the point where my involuntary reactions interfere with the said changing. Bringing me to tears. It takes a hell of a lot for just plain physical pain to bring me to tears. So, more medicine is requested, 'cause that's just not gonna work.
After giving us the run-around some more ("How long has she been on pain-killers now?"), they finally tell us they'll call us back once they've got approval (or something) from the surgeon. They don't call back. My mom calls once or twice, finally, they tell us rather snippily, "We've already called it in". It's not there. Admittedly, this was actually a pharmacy error... it was called in, but they couldn't find it due to reasons unknown. However it may be, we have it now.
Except... we have hydrocodone now. *Hydrocodone*. The medicine I had to stop taking because it did almost *nothing* to dull a much-less-intense pain than I have now. In pill form. That I can't swallow. Medicine that doesn't work, in a form I can't take well. Now, I understand that medicine sometimes can't come in liquid. In these cases, I'm generally given capsules (powdered medicine in a plastic capsules that dissolves in the stomach).. This is cool. Annoying, but what can you do? Pills though... there are some medicines that are ineffective when ground up. As in, all medicinal value is gone. I don't know why or how that works, I've just been told by doctor types that it's so. Thus, being given a pill is frustrating. Add to that it's a pill of a medicine that's barely effective in the first place... I'm a bit irritated. Just a *bit*. Grr...
Attempting to look at the bright side, I'm not in constant pain (except when I'm dumb and get the tube caught on something). It's just when they have to change the dressing. What I'm afraid of, is that something along the lines of a combination of the way I hold my body when in that much pain, and the reluctance to cause such pain, may interfere with things being done to the maximum possible efficiency. And I want this thing gone. Fast. I wanna go back to the dorms, back to a life where I get to see people since I can take myself to them, back to having a fluid schedule, back to not being infirm. Rawr... *sigh*

What the Hell Con - people are asking to come

darkdisciple201@hotmail.com — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 04:46:06 GMT

Count is now at the third person who has randomly contacted me/the club about What the Hell Con. And the only one with any real sort of legitimacy, though the first guy seemed decent enough.

"Greetings,

I'm the local Cell Leader for Steve Jacksons Games MIB program. If
you would like any Steve Jackson Games run such as Munchkin, Ninja
Burger, Burn in Hell, Illuminatti, Chez Geek (perfect for college
students!), or even the GURPS RPG either myself or one of the local MIBs
would be more than happy to attend. Please feel free to e-mail me back
if any of the non-traditional card games sounds good to you."

That'd be cool. It seems we're rather official and sought after now. Good job guys.